I’ve been following the story recently of the shooting of two female police officers in Bradford. Sadly one of the officers who was shot, Pc Sharon Beshenivsky, died in the incident. Of course this is horrific, Pc Beshenivsky was a mother of five and one cannot help but dwell on the fact that five children will now grow up without their mother. However, as disturbing as the incident itself is the reaction by the police force and the media. Let me explain…

The coverage of the shooting has been massive. On one hand this is a good thing, gun crime is still a shocking incident in the UK despite its increase in recent years and the interest in this story bears witness to that, on the flipside though, why does this murder deserve so much more coverage than the murder of a civilian? The reactions it has elicited from the police is quite extraordinary. Former Met Police chief Lord Stevens has gone as far as to call for the death penalty for people who murder police officers. We in the UK do not have the death penalty for any crime, correctly in my opinion, but if we were to ‘bring back hanging’ why would we introduce it to punish the murderers of police officers and not the murderers of civilians? I deplore the statement of Lord Stevens and believe it is the height of irresponsibility.

What I also find very cynical is how certain opportunistic groups inside and outside of the police force are using this tragedy in an attempt to advance their own case for the routine arming of our police. This must not be allowed to happen. It would be a betrayal of hundreds of years of tradition, and of some of our most dearly held beliefs about the nature of our nation. I believe we are living in an era of terrifying reactionism. This incident when placed alongside the ‘anti-terror’ legislation and ID card bill starts to paint a picture of a government, and a public, whose decision making process is based increasingly on the politics of fear and anger.

Posted in Ramblings